Wednesday 8 June 2011

An exciting new literary talent


“The Tiger’s Wife is an exceptional book and Téa Obreht is a truly exciting new talent. Obreht's powers of observation and her understanding of the world are remarkable. By skilfully spinning a series of magical tales she has managed to bring the tragedy of chronic Balkan conflict thumping into our front rooms with a bittersweet vivacity.”

That’s how historian Bettany Hughes, the chair of the 2011 Orange Prize judges, summed up her admiration for this year’s winner - Téa Obreht.

At 25, Obreht is not only the youngest-ever author to win the Orange Prize but she’s done it with her first novel. And if that isn’t enough, she only learned to speak and read English at the age of seven, when she moved from the former Yugoslavia, where she was born, to Egypt. She now lives in New York.

Deciding on the 2011 winner was clearly a tough call. As she announced the award at London’s Royal Festival Hall tonight (June 8), Bettany Hughes admitted that the judging panel had carried on debating the matter till the early hours of the morning.

I can completely understand their dilemma. When I reviewed the Orange shortlist for a newspaper piece last week I was hard-pressed to decide which of the six shortlisted novels I admired the most.

The Orange Prize was launched in 1996 to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing around the world – and the six contenders certainly fulfilled those criteria. They all tackled gritty subjects - storylines ranged from abuse in care to the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone – but managed to be eminently readable at the same time.

The bookies’ favourite was Room, by Irish writer Emma Donoghue. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and in the run-up to the Orange Prize ceremony sold far more copies than the other contenders. But some readers. me included, found this heartrending story, loosely based on the horrific case of the Fritzl family, too much to bear.

The other books on the shortlist were Nicole Krauss’s Great House, Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love, Emma Henderson’s Grace Williams Says it Loud and Kathleen Winter’s Annabel. Remarkably, just like Obreht, Henderson and Winter are debut novelists.

The novel that stood out for me on this outstanding list, though, was the wonderfully-titled Grace Williams Says it Loud. The story of Grace, a severely physically and mentally disabled girl sent to live in a mental institute at the age of 11, Henderson’s book is brave, exuberant and utterly original.

But in the end the judges chose Téa Obreht, and there's no doubt that she is a fantastic new literary talent. Her book, set in the aftermath of the Balkan War, follows young doctor Natalia as she strives to unlock the mystery of her beloved grandfather’s death in mysterious circumstances far away from home and is a magical, distinctive tale. Do read it - and all the others too.

Saturday 4 June 2011

The trials and tribulations of self publishing


Self publishing gets a terrible press. SoI’m always pleased to hear of a writer who’s self-published a book and sold heaps of copies. The latest success story is Dan Holloway, whose thriller, The Company of Fellows, sold a magnificent 1,766 copies last month in the UK alone. Not only that, it’s just topped a Blackwell’s Bookshop online poll to find readers’ favourite Oxford novel – no mean feat when it was up against the likes of Evelyn Waugh, Philip Pullman and Colin Dexter.

But there’s no doubt that self publishing is a risky business. I speak with authority because I self-published a children’s book five years ago. A fast-moving, fun read for nine to 12 year old fans of The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent!, The Rise and Shine Saturday Show follows the fortunes of five children from very different backgrounds who are all desperate to be stars. The competition takes place in a rambling mansion in the wilds of the Lake District, where the five finalists embark on intensive tuition in singing and dancing.

My self-publishing venture began when having devoured everything by Meg Cabot, Celia Rees and Jacqueline Wilson, my daughter complained she couldn’t find anything she wanted to read. “Why don’t you write a book for me?” she asked. So that’s what I did.

Once I’d finished the book, I (madly) hit on the idea of taking charge of the publishing process myself – from choosing the typeface to commissioning a jacket design. So despite knowing next to nothing about how to get an ISBN number or the importance of printing a barcode on the back I plunged in.

Finding an artist to design the cover was the biggest challenge but I eventually found Meng-Chia Lai, a fabulously talented artist who was a student prize-winner at the V & A Illustration Awards. Our meeting was a bit like something out of Brief Encounter. Meng-Chia was about to fly home to Taiwan so we met for a cup of tea at Marylebone Station. There, surrounded by harassed commuters, Meng-Chia showed me the ideas she’d sketched out for my book. Painted in soft hues of purple and pink, her designs were gorgeous. She did my book proud.

Next I had to find a printer prepared to do a short print-run. Cox & Wyman agreed to print 2,000 books, a scary number, but the minimum they’d do. Even so, it was a shock when the consignment was delivered to my house. As the middle-aged courier staggered down our wonky basement steps and stacked them in a daunting pile by the back door, he said witheringly: “I usually deliver to publishers' warehouses. Then every so often I get one of these.”

The mountain of books was so huge that it certainly got me cracking. I was immediately on the phone to wholesalers, booksellers and journalists, offering my sales pitch at break-neck speed. My daughter designed me an ultra-professional despatch note and my son trotted endlessly back and forth to the post office with parcels of books to send to the wholesalers.

I got a fair bit of publicity (the book even made it on to Radio 4) but the hardest part of all was actually getting a self-published book into bookshops. Local shops were keen to help and I sold quite a few on Amazon but I didn’t have any luck further afield. In the end I sold around half of my books and broke even. My foray into self publishing was fun, creative and very hard work. But no, I wouldn’t do it again.

If you’d like to buy a copy of The Rise and Shine Saturday Show, go to Amazon or   http://www.emmaleepotter.co.uk/page4.htm

Friday 27 May 2011

The day that changed their lives


The sense of excitement in Oxford on Wednesday afternoon was palpable.

Police in fluorescent jackets lined St Aldate’s, a helicopter hovered overhead and an acrobat walked across a tight rope on Cornmarket. Oh yes, and just down the road at Christ Church, Michelle Obama was encouraging a generation of schoolgirls to aim high and achieve their potential.

The First Lady’s connection with girls from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College in Islington dates back two years. She first visited the school in 2009 and stayed in touch afterwards, an impressive feat in itself considering her whirlwind, and worldwide, schedule. This time round she met 37 girls from the school during their day-trip to Oxford to learn about the university experience and higher education. After meeting academics, talking to students and visiting Oxford landmarks like the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre (pictured above), the teenagers rounded the day off by filing into the dining hall at Christ Church (now famed as the Hogwarts dining room in the Harry Potter films) to hear Michelle Obama speak to them.

As she recalled her own path from a modest Chicago background to studying at Princeton, she told them: “I realised that if I worked hard enough I could do just as well as anyone else. I realised that success is not about the background you’re from. It’s about the confidence that you have and the effort you’re willing to invest.”

Michelle Obama was inspiring, wise and warm. She answered the girls’ questions – from how long before the US has a female President to how to pick a good husband – and gave each of them a heartfelt hug. As one 15 year old wrote in The Times afterwards: “My name is Aneesah Siddiqui. If I hadn’t met Michelle Obama, you would probably have never heard it. But now – watch this space!”

After an hour and a bit, the police stopped the traffic once more, the First Lady’s cavalcade swept past in a flash and the First Lady, resplendent in white, smiled and waved from the window. The crowd waved back and seconds later the centre of Oxford looked the same again. But girls listening to Michelle Obama that afternoon will remember it as the day that changed their lives.

Saturday 21 May 2011

The fabulous RNA

Romantic fiction often gets slated – largely due, as Joanna Trollope once said, to snobbery and the genre’s pink covers, embossed lettering and “cartoon drawings of cocktail glasses and handbags and ditsy girls falling off their designer heels.”

But so much of the criticism is downright unfair. A total of 25 million romantic novels are bought by readers in the UK every year and romantic fiction boasts some of the most talented writers around. Marian Keyes, for instance, is a wonderful novelist and has covered everything from domestic violence and depression to alcoholism and dementia in her ten bestselling books. If you haven’t read Last Chance Saloon or The Other Side of the Story by the way, you are in for a treat.

But I digress. I had to write this blog after reading Claudia Connell’s sneery piece about the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s summer party in today’s Daily Mail. She claimed it made her feel as though she’d “accidentally stumbled into the Annual General Meeting of the Jam Makers and Knitted Toy Association” and described the guests as “the kind of ladies you’d find working in charity shops or arranging the church flowers.”

RNA members were outraged by her remarks. And I’m not surprised. I’m not an RNA member but I’ve been to lots of their parties and they’re a fabulous group of novelists, not at all the type she describes.

They’re impossible to pigeon-hole either. They range from young to old, from ultra-glam to not-so-glam and from writers just starting out to novelists whose books fly into the bestseller lists the minute they’re published.

New chair Annie Ashurst, for instance, is not only a highly successful Mills and Boon author (she writes as Sara Craven) but also a former Mastermind champion and member of the RNA team that stormed through to the final of University Challenge – the Professionals a few years back. Outgoing chair Katie Fforde has just had her 16th novel, Summer of Love, published to great acclaim while press officer Catherine Jones, aka Kate Lace, will see her 15th book, Gypsy Wedding, hit the book shops in August. Between them they’ve shifted loads of books over the years – and helped countless RNA members along the tricky road to publication too.

The image shows the cover of Fabulous at Fifty, a history of the RNA's first 50 years.

Saturday 14 May 2011

The press pack

Working from home is a double-edged sword. I can start work when I want, wear what I please, chat to my son when he gets in from school and fix coffee with friends without a clock-watching news editor yelling at me for being late back.

All good, but I still hanker after office life – the gossip, the banter, the buzz. The best place I ever worked was the Evening Standard, where I spent five years as a hard news reporter. London’s evening paper was based in Fleet Street back then and it was a different world – a world dominated by clattering typewriters, larger than life characters and eye-wateringly tight deadlines.

The vast newsroom was so noisy that we had to yell at top volume to make ourselves heard above the din. My friend Diane used to sit underneath her desk to do phone interviews because it was the only place she could get a bit of peace and quiet.

Few of us had mobile phones so when we were sent out of the office on a job we had to find a phone box (tricky in the middle of Saddleworth Moor) and dictate our stories straight from our notebooks to the army of copy-takers. “Is there much more of this?” they’d ask crushingly while we were in full, creative flow.

Best of all was the fantastic team of reporters. I’ve never worked with better. Newsmen like the late great John McLeod could calmly turn out the most exquisitely-written copy in ten minutes flat before the first edition deadline at 9.30am. Despite the early starts, John, who made his name covering the Great Train Robbery of 1963, was definitely a night owl. He lived and breathed newspapers and could often be found catching forty winks in the office in the early hours of the morning. His shorthand was immaculate, his knowledge of court reporting second to none and yet he was the most generous man, always happy to help out the younger, less experienced journalists in the press pack.

The move to swanky riverside offices and the advent of new technology transformed newspapers beyond all recognition. But do you know, I wouldn’t have missed Fleet Street for anything.

Thursday 12 May 2011

Chocolate biscuits, nagging and getting through exams

Revision fever is rife at House with No Name towers. With two teenagers working towards exams, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Desperate to help (something they don’t want at all!), I appealed for advice on Twitter. Answers came back thick and fast, ranging from “nag them about tidying their rooms - they'll prefer to revise” to “don’t insist that they can revise continuously - build in plenty of proper breaks” to “stock up with chocolate biscuits and other treats.”

I also looked back at my files and found a dreaded exams piece I wrote this time last year. It cheered me up no end so I've reprinted it here.

Teenager Ned gazes unhappily at the bright sunshine and blue sky and says for the umpteenth time: "I can’t wait for two weeks on Thursday."

Yes, the dreaded exams have begun and the house is filled with dog-eared files, text books and timetables. Ned’s at the top of the house, where no one can monitor precisely how much work he’s doing, while Lottie’s working in the kitchen to escape the temptations of Facebook and Twitter. The only trouble is that every time I tiptoe in to make cups of tea she asks me to test her on the radicalisation of the army in 1647. You what?

Then an email from www.mydaughter.co.uk pops into my inbox. It’s an excellent website, aimed at giving information and advice on “raising and educating happy, fulfilled girls.” With the exam season in full swing, the latest edition includes a raft of advice from leading headteachers on exam stress and how parents can help their daughters revise. There’s just one problem. If I dared try any of the heads’ suggestions in our house Lottie would soon tell me where to go.

"Rather than banning her use of the computer and mobile," reads one tip, "encourage her to negotiate a communication contract with her friends where they all agree which 20 minutes they will all go online/communicate with each other .... and make her stick to it."

I’m obviously a completely ineffectual parent but if I dared to mention the idea of drawing up a "communication contract" Lottie would laugh hysterically. The moment I offer any advice at all, she says "I’ll sort myself out" or, more crushingly, "that’s the last thing I’d do." And do you know what? She’s absolutely right. Her exams are her business, and she’ll do them her way.

PS: If your children are revising for GCSEs, take a look at some of the innovative ideas devised by the seven winners of Britain’s Dream Teachers, a competition launched by YouTube and TV chef Jamie Oliver to find the most inspiring teachers in the country. See www.youtube.com/dreamteachers
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